Bait and Switch

The Catholic Review

Difficult it would be to view a more buoyant, life-affirming series of life-size photos adorning a local store window. Smiling babies embraced by grandparents or chuckling invitingly to passersby–it takes up almost half a block on Howard Street in our city–and it is an abortion factory run by Planned Parenthood.

What deception! Once inside those doors, most babies in the womb will never see the light of day.

Last Good Friday morning, what a contrast just a couple of blocks away. Hosted by our good pastor, Msgr. Art Bastress at St. Alphonsus Church, more than 100 “pilgrims” gathered to affirm life. And yes, there were smiling babies in strollers and generous women and men of every age and background. We stopped 14 times from the church to the abortion center to mark the principal moments of the self-sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary. Having arrived at the “photo gallery” displayed by Planned Parenthood (and paid for in large part by our tax money), we prayed the sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary on behalf of the victims enticed into those doors by the false promise of “an easy solution.” And how many lives forever damaged and destroyed by the destructive and well-oiled machinery of an international campaign to use abortion as an effective vehicle for population limitation and a fall-back for birth control.

How ironic it is that our taxes are going to such cultures of death around us while Baltimore City is aggressively seeking to limit the largely volunteer efforts of neighbors who not only believe that every human life is priceless and worth saving, but also support our pregnancy life centers in offering healthy options to so many in desperate straits.

Enough!

As you have read in these pages recently, we are challenging in Federal Court this blatant attempt to muzzle our pro-life efforts that span the religious divide.

Two requests:

Pray for our success.

Take stock: what might you do locally both to promote the God-given rights of our smallest and most helpless of our youngest members and to give encouragement to those on the front lines of such pro-life causes.

And getting back to the beginning, don’t even begin to believe what you see in deceptive store windows sponsored by Planned Parenthood.